FORESTS OF MYSORE DISTRICT 



of fire protection, and its probable advantage in the 

 case of arboreal growth in India; but it is a self- 

 evident fact that fire protection, unless it be 

 uniformly successful and continuous, becomes more 

 disastrous in its effects upon a forest into which 

 fire may have entered after a year or two of 

 immunity, than its total neglect would have been ; 

 lor, from the comparatively small amount of 

 inflammable matter which results in a single season, 

 an annual fire which would have but little effect upon 

 healthy standing trees would, in the latter case, do 

 little damage, while in the former, the large accumu- 

 lation of dry vegetable matter causes a fire of far 

 more scorching power and destructive effect. 



Forest officers were formerly fond of trying to 

 account for jungle fires, by the theory of their 

 reputed spontaneous generation, owing to the 

 friction of dry bamboos. It is hardly necessary, 

 however, to state that such a theory is entirely 

 false and untenable ; the only ordinary origin of 

 fires being fire itself, and their only possible natural 

 source being lightning, any spontaneous ignition 

 due to the latter being, however, rendered most 

 improbable from the fact that lightning is usually 

 accompanied by rain in forest tracts. 



Occasionally a combination of circumstances 

 occurs which renders fire protection an easy matter, 

 or, rather, which of itself prevents fires from 

 occurring in the forests, viz., when abnormally late 

 rains in one season are so closely followed by 

 exceptionally early ones in the following year that 

 the grass does not entirely dry up. The early 



407 



